Congress Squares Off Over Drug Pricing And A Controversial Drug Discount Program

KFF Health News, July 19, 2017

Advocates of the program say the discounts — and the money hospitals make on payments from Medicare — are necessary to combat skyrocketing drug prices. But federal reports in recent years have raised concerns about oversight and abuse of the 340B program.

This article first appeared July 18, 2017 on Kaiser Health News.

By Sarah Jane Tribble

House Democrats are calling foul on Republican assertions that cuts to a little-known discount drug program will eventually reduce skyrocketing drug prices.

At a hearing Tuesday, Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) said high drug prices should be investigated separately from the focus on oversight of the drug discount program, known as 340B.

“I think we need an investigation, a robust investigation, and a series of hearings that explore in-depth the reasons for exorbitant cost of drugs and why the prices continue to rise,” DeGette said.

Last week, Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price proposed steep cuts in what Medicare reimburses some hospitals for outpatient drugs under the 340B program. In a release, Price said such cuts would be “a significant step toward fulfilling President [Donald] Trump’s promise to address rising drug prices.”

DeGette countered Tuesday that the proposal “would do nothing” to address high drug prices and said making that connection “seems more like fantasy than reality.”

Also on Tuesday, there were other hints at Trump Administration efforts to address drug pricing. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb talked in a public meeting about lowering drug prices on a different front — saying that the agency needs to increase generic drug competition.

Trump routinely criticized high drug prices on the campaign trail last year and promised to take action during his presidency. In June, a leaked draft of an executive order on drug prices, first reported by The New York Times, spoke of facilitating more drug competition but also targeted the 340B program. That strategy immediately drew criticism from Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), who said scaling back the program would drive up what hospital patients pay for drugs and force Americans “to choose between health and other basic life necessities, like putting food on the table and a roof overhead for the family.”

The federal 340B program requires pharmaceutical manufacturers to provide outpatient drugs at a significant discount to hospitals and clinics that serve a largely low-income population.

After buying the discounted drugs, the hospitals and clinics can bill Medicare or other insurers at their regular rate, pocketing the difference.

About 40 percent of hospitals nationwide participate in the program and, as House members pointed out Tuesday, the program has grown dramatically in recent years to become a significant force in the pharmaceutical marketplace. The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission estimated that hospitals and other participating entities spent more than $7 billion to buy 340B drugs in 2013, three times the amount spent in 2005.

Advocates of the program say the discounts — and the money hospitals make on payments from Medicare — are necessary to combat skyrocketing drug prices.

But federal reports in recent years from the Medicare advisory board, as well as the Government Accountability Office and the Office of Inspector General, have raised concerns about oversight and abuse of the 340B program.

Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) noted “this is a difficult hearing” because while the program was created with good intent, its complexity makes it challenging to understand. For example, hospitals and clinics aren’t required to pass any discounts they receive on to patients — they can direct the money to their general fund.

Looking at his colleagues, Barton said: “We all support the program but it has grown topsy-turvy. We need to put the best minds on this.”

Republican lawmakers are not the only ones raising concerns about 340B oversight. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, which represents drugmakers, advocates ensuring hospitals are “good stewards” of the money they gain from the program’s discounts.

Peggy Tighe, who represents hospitals in the 340B program as a principal at the D.C. law firm Powers, said “PhRMA has done a particularly good job of getting the attention of the administration …. They haven’t let up on 340B.”

The rule that Price proposed last week would cut what hospitals are paid for drugs from the Medicare Part B program, which covers outpatient drugs including those delivered through infusion.

Currently, Medicare pays hospitals an average sales price plus 6 percent for most of the Part B drugs they purchase. The administration’s proposal is to cut that to average sales price minus 22.5 percent.

340B Health, a coalition that represents hospitals, immediately responded to the proposal saying the cuts would be “devastating” to hospitals and would “lead to cuts in patient services.”

KHN’s coverage of prescription drug development, costs and pricing is supported in part by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation.

Analysis: GOP Failure To Replace The Health Law Was Years In The Making

KFF Health News, July 19, 2017

In retrospect, Republicans’ inability to overhaul the health law should not come as much of a surprise.

This article first appeared July 18, 2017 on Kaiser Health News.

By Julie Rovner

Seven years of Republican vows to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act came to a crashing halt Tuesday, when it became clear that the Senate could not muster the necessary votes for any of three separate proposals that have been under consideration.

The failure, at least for now, breaks one of the key promises Republicans have made to their voters since 2010, when the ACA first became law.

“This has been a very challenging experience for all of us,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told reporters Tuesday afternoon. “It’s pretty clear that there are not 50 Republicans at the moment to vote for a replacement for Obamacare.”

Monday night’s declaration of opposition by conservative Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) effectively scotched even the chance to start debate on the version of a bill unveiled last week.

McConnell added that the Senate would vote early next week on a plan, originally approved in 2015 and vetoed by President Barack Obama, that would repeal parts of the health law. That approach would delay the effective date for two years to give lawmakers time to come up with a replacement.

However, the opposition of moderate Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine), Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), ensures that vote will fail, too.

“To just say ‘repeal and trust us, we’re going to fix it in a couple of years,’ that’s not going to provide comfort to the anxiety a lot of Alaskan families are feeling right now,” Murkowski told reporters.

In retrospect, Republicans’ inability to overhaul the health law should not come as much of a surprise. Here are some of the reasons:

1. It’s hard to take things away from people.

Once launched, federal programs that provide people with benefits they find important and valuable are very difficult to rescind. In the case of health care, people’s lives can be at stake. In the current debate, patients who feared what would happen to their health coverage made their concerns known — loudly — to lawmakers.

2. Republicans have long been divided on health care.

Republicans’ dirty little secret the past seven years is that the only thing they fundamentally agreed on when it comes to health care was the slogan “repeal and replace.” There’s a reason they failed to have a plan ready when Donald Trump was elected president — all efforts to reach a consensus had thus far failed.

“I did not come to Washington to hurt people,” said Capito in a statement. “I have serious concerns about how we continue to provide affordable care to those who have benefited from West Virginia’s decision to expand Medicaid.”

But the more conservative members, notably Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), have other priorities. “All of us promised we would repeal Obamacare,” Paul told reporters Tuesday. “If you’re not willing to vote the way you voted in 2015 then you need to go back home and you need to explain to Republicans why you’re no longer for repealing Obamacare.”

3. Presidential leadership on hard issues is important.

President Trump has been all over the place in what he said he wanted from a health bill. It was his original insistence that “repeal and replace” happen simultaneously that moved Congress away from its 2015 strategy of repealing first and replacing later. He hosted a celebration in the White House Rose Garden when the House passed its bill, then subsequently called the measure “mean” during a strategy meeting with Senators.

When it became clear Monday night that the Senate effort was foundering, Trump tweeted: “Republicans should just REPEAL failing ObamaCare now & work on a new Healthcare Plan that will start from a clean slate.” But within hours he instead suggested, “As I have always said, let ObamaCare fail and then come together and do a great healthcare plan.”

The president “gave them an impossible assignment with his promises (more, better, cheaper for all) and neither policy nor bully pulpit help at crunch time,” said Len Nichols, a professor of health policy at George Mason University. “And now he’ll blame them for failing.”

Added Thomas Miller, of the conservative American Enterprise Institute: “We now have a randomized clinical trial that proves one cannot lead and govern via Twitter.”

4. Health care is complicated. Really.

Health care has not traditionally been a major voting issue for Republicans, and thus it has been a low priority — compared with issues like taxes and trade — for the officials they elect.

Adding to the complexity is that the Republicans’ bench is nowhere near as deep as the Democrats’ when it comes to health policy expertise. Democrats have toiled on these issues for years. Even before the Affordable Care Act, many had served in Congress for decades and learned from the mistakes that were made on efforts like the failed health bill under President Bill Clinton.

5. Some parts of the ACA really are popular, even among Republicans.

The requirement for most people to have insurance or else pay a fine — the individual mandate — has consistently been unpopular among voters of all political stripes. But many other major provisions of the health law, such as guaranteeing coverage for people with preexisting conditions, remain broadly popular.

In fact, in recent months, the Affordable Care Act has been growing in popularity. Most polls show it more than twice as popular as GOP efforts to overhaul it.

“Republicans have to admit that some of the things in the ACA, we actually liked,” said Murkowski.

That left a huge gap between Republicans who wanted to maintain the popular benefits and those who wanted to repeal the law entirely. A gap that, so far, Republicans have been unable to bridge.

Rachel Bluth contributed to this story.

Millions More Uninsured Could Impact Health Of Those With Insurance, Too

KFF Health News, July 17, 2017

Communities with higher rates of uninsurance are known to have worse access to care for those with Medicare or private insurance, says a healthcare policy expert.

This article first appeared July 17, 2017 on Kaiser Health News.

By Julie Rovner

Much has been written lately about how individuals’ health could suffer if they lose insurance under the health proposals circulating in the U.S. House and Senate. But there is another consequence: creating millions more people without insurance could also adversely affect the health of people who remain insured.

“We know that communities with higher rates of uninsurance have worse access to care for those with Medicare or private insurance,” said John Ayanian, director of the Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation at the University of Michigan. And if either of the GOP proposals under consideration becomes law, he said, “it’s very likely we would go back to some of those same problems we had a decade ago with high rates of uninsurance.”

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that either the bill passed by the House or the one under consideration in the Senate could result in more than 20 million more Americans without insurance over the next decade.

Ayanian was part of an expert panel from the nonpartisan National Academy of Medicine that examined the implications of being uninsured in a series of studies from 2001 to 2009. An entire report looked solely at the spillover effect of large numbers of uninsured people on those around them. “The Committee believes it both mistaken and dangerous to assume that the persistence of a sizable uninsured population in the United States harms only those who are uninsured,” said the report.

That is mostly because it is difficult for health providers to maintain services in areas with large numbers of patients who cannot pay for care. “Those communities are less attractive for physicians and other health care providers to locate,” said Ayanian. “That affects access to care for everyone,” he said, particularly for critical but high-cost services like trauma care, burn care and neonatal intensive care.

The potential is not merely theoretical. Hospitals in sparsely populated areas, particularly in states that did not opt to expand the Medicaid program, have been cutting back services like maternity care or closing altogether in recent years. These are the same parts of the country that voted for President Donald Trump by large margins.

The impact is not just on availability of services. A 2007 study from researchers at the University of Pennsylvania in the journal Health Affairs found that in areas with many uninsured people, the quality of care was lower as well. Primary care doctors “reported that the higher the proportion of uninsured people in their community, the less likely they are to be able to refer their patients to high-quality specialists,” found the researchers. “Specialists also reported that the higher the community uninsurance rate, the less able they are to deliver high-quality care to their patients,” the study said.

That spillover effect extends beyond access to health care itself, according to a new report from The Commonwealth Fund. Researchers from George Washington University found that if the House-passed health bill were to become law, nearly 1.5 million jobs could be lost over the next decade.

“We’re talking about a net funding loss to states of millions of dollars,” said Leighton Ku, the study’s lead author. “What this means is that states will have higher needs, less revenue to pay for services, and at the same time the federal government is putting less money into Medicaid,” he said. “So it all adds up to a great revenue crunch that’s similar to the Great Recession” of the past decade.

While most of the job losses would be in health care, other jobs would be affected too, he said.

For example, health care workers who lose jobs will then purchase fewer goods and services, affecting the bottom line of local businesses. Health care facilities that were planning to expand might not, affecting the construction industry. And the impact could cross state lines, said Ku. “We might see fewer people going to Disney World,” he said, because people who lose their jobs would lack money to take vacations.

CA Hits Nerve By Singling Out Cardiac Surgeons With Higher Patient Death Rates

KFF Health News, July 17, 2017

California is one of a handful of states that publicly reports surgeons’ names and risk-adjusted death rates on a procedure known as the “isolated coronary artery bypass graft."

This article first appeared July 17, 2017 on Kaiser Health News.

By Anna Gorman

Michael Koumjian, a heart surgeon for nearly three decades, said he considered treating the sickest patients a badge of honor. The San Diego doctor was frequently called upon to operate on those who had multiple illnesses or who’d undergone CPR before arriving at the hospital.

Recently, however, Koumjian received some unwelcome recognition: He was identified in a public database of California heart surgeons as one of seven with a higher-than-average death rate for patients who underwent a common bypass procedure.

“If you are willing to give people a shot and their only chance is surgery, then you are going to have more deaths and be criticized," said Koumjian, whose risk-adjusted death rate was 7.5 per 100 surgeries in 2014-15. “The surgeons that worry about their stats just don’t take those cases."

Now, Koumjian said he is reconsidering taking such complicated cases because he can’t afford to continue being labeled a “bad surgeon."

California is one of a handful of states — including New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey — that publicly reports surgeons’ names and risk-adjusted death rates on a procedure known as the “isolated coronary artery bypass graft." The practice is controversial: Proponents argue transparency improves quality and informs consumers. Critics say it deters surgeons from accepting complex cases and can unfairly tarnish doctors’ records.

“This is a hotly debated issue," said Ralph Brindis, a cardiologist and professor at UC-San Francisco who chairs the advisory panel for the state report. “But to me, the pros of public reporting outweigh the negatives. I think consumers deserve to have a right to that information."

Prompted by a state law, the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development began issuing the reports in 2003 and produces them every two years. Outcomes from the bypass procedure had long been used as one of several measures of hospital quality. But that marked the first time physician names were attached — and the bypass is still the only procedure for which such physician-specific reports are released publicly in California.

California’s law was sponsored by consumer advocates, who argued that publicly listing the names of outlier surgeons in New York had appeared to bring about a significant drop in death rates from the bypass procedure. State officials say it has worked here as well: The rate declined from 2.91 to 1.97 deaths per 100 surgeries from 2003 to 2014.

“Providing the results back to the surgeons, facilities and the public overall results in higher quality performance for everybody," said Holly Hoegh, manager of the clinical data unit at the state’s health planning and development office.

Since the state began issuing the reports, the number of surgeons with significantly higher death rates than the state average has ranged from six to 12, and none has made the list twice. The most recent report, released in May, is based on surgeries performed in 2013 and 2014.

In this year’s report, the seven surgeons with above-average death rates — out of 271 surgeons listed — include several veterans in the field. Among them were Daniel Pellegrini, chief of inpatient quality at Kaiser Permanente San Francisco and John M. Robertson, director of thoracic and cardiovascular surgery at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica. Most defended their records, arguing that some of the deaths shouldn’t have been counted or that the death rates didn’t represent the totality of their careers. (Kaiser Health News, which produces California Healthline, is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.)

“For the lion’s share of my career, my numbers were good and I’m very proud of them," said Pellegrini. “I don’t think this is reflective of my work overall. I do think that’s reflective that I was willing to take on tough cases."

During the two years covered in the report, Pellegrini performed 69 surgeries and four patients died. That brought his risk-adjusted rate to 11.48 deaths per 100, above the state average of 2.13 per 100 in that period.

Pellegrini said he supports public reporting, but he argues the calculations don’t fully take the varying complexity of the cases into account and that a couple of bad outcomes can skew the rates.

Robertson said in a written statement that he had three very “complex and challenging" cases involving patients who came to the hospital with “extraordinary complications and additional unrelated conditions." They were among five deaths out of 71 patients during the reporting period, giving him an adjusted rate of 9.75 per 100 surgeries.

“While I appreciate independent oversight, it’s important for consumers to realize that two years of data do not illustrate overall results," Robertson said. “Every single patient is different."

The rates are calculated based on a nationally recognized method that includes deaths occurring during hospitalization, regardless of how long the stay, or anytime within 30 days after the surgery, regardless of the venue. All licensed hospitals must report the data to the state.

State officials said that providing surgeons’ names can help consumers make choices about who they want to operate on them, assuming it’s not an emergency.

“It is important for patients to be involved in their own health care, and we are trying to work more and more on getting this information in an easy-to-use format for the man on the street," said Hoegh, of the state’s health planning and development office.

No minimum number of surgeries is needed to calculate a rate, but the results must be statistically significant and are risk-adjusted to account for varying levels of illness or frailty among patients, Hoegh said.

She acknowledged that “a risk model can never capture all the risk" and said her office is always trying to improve its approach.

Surgeons sometimes file appeals — arguing, for example, that the risk was improperly calculated or that the death was unrelated to the surgery. The appeals can result in adjustments to a rate, Hoegh said.

Despite the controversy it generates, the public reporting is supported by the California Society of Thoracic Surgeons, the professional association representing the surgeons. No one wants to be on the list, but “transparency is always a good thing," said Junaid Khan, president of the society and director of cardiovascular surgery at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in the Bay Area.

“The purpose of the list is not to be punitive," said Khan. “It’s not to embarrass anybody. It is to help improve quality."

Khan added that he believes outcomes of other heart procedures, such as angioplasty, should also be publicly reported.

Consumers Union, which sponsored the bill that led to the cardiac surgeon reports, supports expanding doctor-specific reporting to include a variety of other procedures — for example, birth outcomes, which could be valuable for expectant parents as they look for a doctor.

“Consumers are really hungry for physician-specific information," said Betsy Imholz, the advocacy group’s special projects director. And, she added, “care that people receive actually improves once the data is made public."

But efforts to expand reporting by name are likely to hit opposition. Officials in Massachusetts, who had been reporting bypass outcomes for individual doctors, stopped doing it in 2013. Surgeons supported reporting to improve outcomes, but they were concerned that they were being identified publicly as outliers when they really were just taking on difficult cases, said Daniel Engelman, president of the Massachusetts Society of Thoracic Surgeons.

“Cardiac surgeons said, ‘Enough is enough. We can’t risk being in the papers as outliers,’" Engelman said.

Engelman said the surgeons cited research from New York showing that public reporting may have led surgeons to turn away high-risk patients. Hoegh said research has not uncovered any such evidence in California.

In addition to Koumjian, Robertson and Pellegrini, the physicians in California with higher-than-average rates were Philip Faraci, Eli R. Capouya, Alexander R. Marmureanu, Yousef M. Odeh. Capouya declined to comment.

Faraci, 75, said his rate (8.34 per 100) was based on four deaths out of 33 surgeries, not enough to calculate death rates, he said. Faraci, who is semi-retired, said he wasn’t too worried about the rating, though. “I have been in practice for over 30 years and I have never been published as a below-average surgeon before," he said.

Odeh, 45, performed 10 surgeries and had two deaths while at Presbyterian Intercommunity Hospital in Whittier, resulting in a mortality rate of 26.17 per 100. “It was my first job out of residency, and I didn’t have much guidance," Odeh said. “That’s a recipe for disaster."

Odeh said those two years don’t reflect his skills as a surgeon, adding that he has done hundreds of surgeries since then without incident.

Marmureanu, who operates at several Los Angeles-area hospitals, had a mortality rate of 18.04 based on three deaths among 22 cases. “I do the most complicated cases in town," he said, adding that one of the patients died later after being hit by a car.

"Hospital patients don’t care" about the report," he said. "Nobody pays attention to this data other than journalists."

Analysis: Senate's Latest Health Blueprint Cuts Costs At The Expense Of Chronically Ill

KFF Health News, July 17, 2017

“It seems to me it’s not nearly enough” to keep plans affordable for those with chronic illness, said Timothy Jost, emeritus law professor at Washington and Lee University and an expert on health reform.

This article first appeared July 17, 2017 on Kaiser Health News.

By Jay Hancock

The latest Senate health proposal reins in costs by effectively splitting the individual insurance market, with healthy people diverted into stripped-down plans and chronically ill individuals left with pricey and potentially out-of-reach options, insurance analysts said.

This draft — a fresh attempt by the Republican Party to undo the Affordable Care Act — injects more uncertainty into plans for people with preexisting conditions such as cancer, asthma, diabetes or other long-term ailments. Those people, insured through ACA marketplaces now, could be more isolated than in an earlier version of the Senate bill.

For such patients, “I would be pretty nervous,” said Sabrina Corlette, a research professor at Georgetown University’s Health Policy Institute. “You will have separate pools — one that only healthy people can get into and one for you. That pool is liable to get increasingly expensive — in fact, very expensive over time.”

The two biggest insurer trade groups went further on Friday, saying in an unusually strong-worded letter that “millions of more individuals will become uninsured” if the proposal becomes law.

Plans sold to individuals and families through the Obamacare exchanges cover some 10 million people, many with chronic disease.

A draft bill released Thursday added a proposal from Texas Sen. Ted Cruz that would let insurers sell health coverage outside the ACA exchanges with no provisions for prescription drugs, mental illness, hospitalization or almost any other benefit.

Such plans would be far cheaper than comprehensive coverage and almost certainly draw younger, healthier people away from high-benefit insurance, analysts said.

Without healthy customers subsidizing the sick, premiums and other costs would soar for plans that accept chronically ill patients, experts said. The Senate draft includes $70 billion over a decade to help pay those costs, but it’s far from clear that would be enough.

Insurers were struggling last week to grasp the implications of the legislation, studded with ambiguous language. One big takeaway: The Senate’s version of health care would undermine historical assumptions and drastically shift risk in the individual market.

Letting carriers sell low-cost, low-benefit plans to healthy consumers “is simply unworkable in any form and would undermine protections for those with pre-existing medical conditions, increase premiums and lead to widespread terminations of coverage for people currently enrolled in the individual market,” America’s Health Insurance Plans and the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, two lobbying groups, said in a Friday letter to the Senate.

The Republicans are nowhere near success with this plan. Already two of the 52 Republican senators — Kentucky conservative Rand Paul and Maine moderate Susan Collins — have said they won’t support the bill. One more defection would sink it, and a delay caused by the surgery of Arizona Republican John McCain gives opponents more time to build resistance.

Senate leaders had scheduled a vote for this week but postponed it to give McCain time to recover from treatment of a blood clot near his eye.

Meanwhile, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office is likely to issue its assessment of the bill this week. The CBO had said an earlier Senate bill would increase the number of people without health insurance by 22 million by 2026.

The Republican plan offers a freer insurance market — something the party has long favored — while purporting to protect those with existing illness. Insurers selling stripped-down plans would be required to also offer traditional Obamacare plans covering preexisting conditions.

You will have separate pools — one that only healthy people can get into and one for you.

Sabrina Corlette, Georgetown University’s Health Policy Institute

But such coverage risks becoming a high-cost ghetto for the chronically ill, experts said. It would likely become unattractive to carriers and unaffordable to members who could face paying thousands of dollars for premiums and thousands more out-of-pocket before coverage kicks in.

Even though insurers selling unregulated plans would be required to offer full-coverage plans to all comers, they could limit their risk with time-tested maneuvers to repel the sick, said Ana Gupte, who follows health care stocks for Leerink Partners.

“They usually find ways to minimize enrollment” such as jacking up premiums or cutting broker commissions for certain coverage, she said.

Nor would there likely be much choice in high-benefit Obamacare plans, she said. Under the Senate bill, carriers seeking to sell skimpy coverage would have to offer only one high-benefit “gold” plan and a medium-benefit “silver” plan as traditionally sold under the Affordable Care Act.

Even then, the legislation would allow state officials to alter Obamacare standards for out-of-pocket maximums and essential health benefits.

That even could allow richer plans intended for the chronically ill to drop coverage of prescription drugs, mental illness, maternity care or other items.

The bill includes two measures intended to keep costs in high-benefit Obamacare plans from spiking out of control. One is the $70 billion in federal subsidies to help cover the expense of the pool of sick people.

“It seems to me it’s not nearly enough” to keep plans affordable for those with chronic illness, said Timothy Jost, emeritus law professor at Washington and Lee University and an expert on health reform.

The other is a six-month waiting period for applicants wanting to buy full coverage who don’t already have it.

That’s supposed to induce healthy people to buy high-coverage plans and help subsidize the sick. Otherwise they risk a coverage gap if they become gravely ill or hurt, raising the chance they would have to pay thousands out-of-pocket for any unexpected medical expense.

But that incentive to buy comprehensive coverage is far weaker than Obamacare’s mandate, which fined people for not having insurance, Jost said. The Republicans’ bills would scrap the mandate.

“I just don’t think it’s going to be terribly effective,” he said.

Senate Health Bill Still Short On 'Yays' But Leaders Vow Vote Next Week

KFF Health News, July 14, 2017

One more “no” vote would stop the bill in its tracks, even with a potential tie-breaking vote from Vice President Mike Pence.

This article first appeared July 13, 2017 on Kaiser Health News.

By Julie Rovner

Senate Republican leaders Thursday released their revised bill to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act, but they acknowledged that furious days of negotiation have not yet secured the 50 votes necessary to pass the measure over unanimous Democratic objections.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) the No. 2 GOP leader, told reporters that while backers of the measure did not yet have the GOP votes needed, “we will by the time we vote.”

The revised draft was presented to Republican senators at a closed meeting Thursday morning. Among its many provisions, it would cap federal funding for the Medicaid program, covers more than 70 million low-income Americans, and give states authority to waive insurance regulations in the ACA.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has been struggling for more than two weeks to satisfy holdouts from both wings of the party. Conservatives complain that the draft bill unveiled last month did not go far enough to repeal many of the ACA’s regulations, while moderates argue that structural changes and cuts to the Medicaid program for the poor are too deep.

So far, two of the 52 Republican senators have declared they will not even vote for the preliminary motion that would begin formal debate: conservative Rand Paul of Kentucky and moderate Susan Collins of Maine. “Still deep cuts to Medicaid,” Collins tweeted. “Will vote no on” motion to proceed to the bill.

Collins told reporters separately that she cannot support the bill, and criticized Senate leaders for the way they produced it. Such a fundamental change to Medicaid should have a full set of legislative hearings, she explained. Even fully repealing the ACA would not cap spending for Medicaid in the way the Senate bill is proposing. “Repealing Obamcare would not change the underlying Medicaid program,” she said.

The ACA expanded Medicaid, but the Senate changes would cut it back well beyond that expansion.

One more “no” vote would stop the bill in its tracks, even with a potential tie-breaking vote from Vice President Mike Pence. Several moderate senators emerged from the closed meeting saying they were still undecided, including Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska).

Leaders did, however, apparently satisfy some of their more conservative members by making some changes proposed by Ted Cruz (R-Texas). Cruz touted after the meeting that the legislation includes provisions to allow people to use tax-preferred health savings accounts to pay insurance premiums (which are currently banned). It would also allow anyone to purchase a plan that covers only catastrophic health expenses (which the ACA limits to those under age 30) and permit insurers to offer plans that do not conform to many of the regulations in current law. Those rules include the ACA’s requirements for coverage of specific health benefits as well as bans on insurers charging sick people more and limiting out-of-pocket costs.

Related: How Does The Senate Health Plan Affect You?

Senate leaders offered to spend more money on people who could be adversely affected by the insurance changes, including an additional $45 billion to combat opioid abuse, but moderates said it does not solve the problem.

“There’s money,” Collins told reporters, “but too many uses for that money.”

Democrats remained steadfastly opposed to the measure. “The meat of this bill is exactly the same as it was before, and in some ways, they’ve somehow managed to make it even worse,” said Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).

Even if leaders round up the needed votes, there are still a number of obstacles between this draft bill and President Donald Trump’s signature. They include:

Procedural Restrictions

Republicans are trying to pass their health bill using a special budget process that lets them avoid a filibuster and the usual requirement to get 60 votes for passage. But strict rules govern what can and cannot be included in such a “budget reconciliation” bill. Democrats this week are arguing to the Senate parliamentarian that many sections of the bill should not be allowed, including those that would impose abortion restrictions and modify the private insurance regulations included in the ACA.

Cost Estimates

The Congressional Budget Office is the official scorekeeper for Congress. It said the first version of the Senate bill would result in 22 million more uninsured people by 2026.

CBO is expected to offer its score of the bill next week, but some Senate Republicans on Thursday said that rather than wait for that, they might ask the Department of Health and Human Services to do it instead. That would be likely to produce a number more favorable to Republicans.

Democrats saw that option as a partisan play by Republicans. “It’s gaming the score,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio). “Why don’t they just have the score written in McConnell’s office by his staff?”

House Passage

Whatever the Senate produces must be acceptable to a majority of the House, or else the two chambers could get bogged down in weeks or months of negotiations. But changes that would make the Senate bill more acceptable to moderates there would likely not be able to get through the more conservative House. Leaders are walking a thin tightrope.

On the other hand, Republicans continue to be driven by the imperative of keeping their seven-year promise to overturn the health law.

“Virtually every Republican in this body has supported the effort to repeal and replace Obamacare more or less since the day it was signed into law,” Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said on the floor. “This legislation, while far from perfect, would fulfill the vast majority of those promises.”

Opposition To GOP Repeal Bill Inches Up, Intensifies

KFF Health News, July 14, 2017

Sixty-one percent of the public said this month they did not like the GOP health care effort, now undergoing a revised push in the Senate.

This article first appeared July 14, 2017 on Kaiser Health News.

By Jordan Rau

Public opposition to the Republican effort to replace the Affordable Care Act grew stronger this month, but a core group of Republicans remained in support, according to a poll released Friday.

Sixty-one percent of the public said this month they did not like the GOP health care effort, now undergoing a revised push in the Senate. That was a 6 percentage point increase from the Kaiser Family Foundation’s monthly tracking results in June, when 55 percent expressed unfavorable opinions. (Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent program of the foundation.)

The poll also found opposition was becoming more passionate, with more of the public viewing the plan “very” unfavorably. The Affordable Care Act maintained the support of half the populace, nearly double the 28 percent of people who backed the GOP efforts. Two of three people opposed major reductions in Medicaid that are included in the GOP plans.

Nonetheless, a majority of Republicans and supporters of President Trump continued to favor the GOP plan, which would increase the number of uninsured as it alters Medicaid and the private insurance markets that have been running since 2014. In fact, in this month’s poll more Republicans said health care is headed in the right direction than believed that in April, before the House passed its version of the health care replacement bill.

Still, most Americans said they would prefer Republicans and Democrats to work together on health care — 71 percent said they would like to see a bipartisan effort to fix the ACA.

The poll of 1,187 adults was conducted July 5 - 10, about a week after the Congressional Budget Office issued its report on the GOP draft legislation. The margin of error was plus or minus 3 points.

Medicare’s Financial Outlook Slightly Improved, Trustees Say

KFF Health News, July 14, 2017

The hospital trust fund forecast is secure enough that it would not trigger an ACA provision to make automatic cuts to the program, HHS Secretary says.

This article first appeared July 13, 2017 on Kaiser Health News.

By Phil Galewitz

The Trump administration said Thursday that the financial outlook for Medicare’s hospital insurance trust fund improved in the past year due to health costs rising more slowly than expected and predictions that enrollees will use hospital services less often.

The report said that trust fund would last through 2029, one year later than what was projected last year. Two years ago, 2030 was the projected depletion date.

Medicare Part B premiums — which cover visits to physicians and other outpatient costs — should remain stable next year, the trustees said. About a quarter of Part B costs are paid for by beneficiary premiums with the rest from the federal budget.

In contrast, the Part A hospital trust fund is financed mostly through payroll taxes.

The report, from the trustees of the Medicare program, noted that projected costs of the program assume the Affordable Care Act stays in place. President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress are trying to overhaul the law, which when enacted in 2010 added several years to the fiscal life of the trust fund.

Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, one of four Medicare trustees, also said the hospital trust fund forecast was secure enough that it would not trigger an ACA provision to make automatic cuts to the program. Those cuts are required by the ACA when spending is expected to exceed certain benchmarks.

Despite the slightly improved outlook, the trustees warned that the aging of the baby boom population and rising health care costs will cause Medicare expenses to increase from 3.6 percent of gross domestic product in 2016 to 5.6 percent of GDP in 2041, and then level off somewhat to 5.9 percent by 2091.

As in previous trustee reports, the latest analysis warned that Washington should address the financial challenges of Medicare as soon as possible to avoid having to cut benefits to millions of retirees and seniors.

The trustees said national health expenses have slowed considerably in recent years, although it is uncertain if this is a result of the Great Recession, which ended in 2009, or efforts taken by the federal government and private sector to change doctor and hospital reimbursement programs. Senior administration officials said some of the slowing growth in Medicare was due to Obamacare saving money through its accountable care organizations, which pay doctors and hospitals a lump sum each month to care for senior citizens.

Medicare provides health coverage to nearly 57 million people, including seniors and people with disabilities. It has added 5 million people since 2013.

“For 51 years, Medicare has played a crucial role in providing healthcare for America’s senior citizens,” Price said in a statement. “Unfortunately, on its current trajectory, Medicare’s hospital insurance trust fund will be depleted in just over a decade. … As the Trustees Report says, this means that reform to the program is needed.”

Medicare spending were about $679 billion last year. The hospital insurance trust fund helps pay hospital, home health services, nursing home costs and hospice costs.

Whichever Way ‘Repeal And Replace’ Blows, Pharma Is Due For Windfall

KFF Health News, July 13, 2017

Should the White House call on the IRS to offer a safe harbor for chronic disease medications, patients may visit the pharmacy more often despite the high deductibles.

This article first appeared June 08, 2017 on Kaiser Health News.

By Emily Kopp

The pharmaceutical industry could see windfall profits from a little-noticed tweak to the insurance market tucked into the Trump administration’s draft executive order on drug prices, experts say.

The short, technical paragraph calls for the Internal Revenue Service to allow patients with high-deductible health plans to receive care for chronic diseases, including drugs, before meeting their deductibles.

This allowance, known as a “safe harbor,” could be welcome news for patients with chronic conditions like diabetes or asthma stuck with skimpy plans. For example, a diabetes patient could fill her prescription for insulin with just a copay, even if she hadn’t spent enough on medical bills for her insurance coverage to kick in. But in the long term, experts say, extending a safe harbor to chronic care would encourage more employers to adopt these skimpy plans, while shielding the pharmaceutical industry from pressure to lower drug costs.

“It’s hard to view this as anything but a substantial win for pharma,” said Kim Monk, a partner and pharmaceutical expert at Capital Alpha Partners, which tracks laws and regulations for financial institutions.

High-deductible health plans have surged in the past five years. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates almost 40 percent of patients ages 18-64 must pay $1,300 before receiving insurance coverage, and families must pay at least $2,600. And when faced with high drug prices, more of these patients skip filling prescriptions. Of the millions of insured Americans who struggle to pay their medical bills, 41 percent skip filling a prescription due to cost according to a 2016 Kaiser Family Foundation poll. (Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent program of the foundation.)

These high-deductible health plans are likely to grow if the GOP health plan becomes law, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

But should the White House call on the IRS to offer a safe harbor for chronic disease medications, patients may visit the pharmacy more often despite the high deductibles.

“Yes, this provision could alleviate some of the pharmaceutical industry’s concerns about the increased cost-sharing patients with high-deductible plans could expect under the Republican health care bills,” said Rachel Sachs, an associate professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis who studies the pharmaceutical industry. “As the draft order notes, if high-deductible plan enrollees with chronic conditions can lower out-of-pocket costs for some of their medications, they will be more likely to adhere to their treatment regimens.”

The language of the draft executive order could signal a significant expansion of drug coverage for the growing population with high-deductible plans, according to Stacie Dusetzina, assistant professor of pharmacy and public health at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Under the Affordable Care Act, preventive drugs were covered before the deductible was met, but the provision was “quite narrowly defined and did not include medications that are used to prevent the progression of disease,” Dusetzina said. “Instead, it was more about preventing the disease altogether. In that way, the executive order could have a big impact on patient access to drugs.”

But unlike coverage under Medicaid or under a plan with a higher actuarial value, the IRS would determine what care and medications are covered. It’s not yet clear whether the safe harbor would extend to essential HIV drugs, insulin or expensive drugs that treat rare diseases.

“You’re asking the IRS to define something the IRS has never had to define before,” said Monk.

The draft executive order explains that the expanded coverage is “for the purpose of helping patients adhere to clinical regimes and thereby reducing the cost of care.” For instance, a patient who can afford an inhaler is less likely to be admitted to the hospital for wheezing. But whether this compliance reduces the cost of care in the long term depends on treatment costs and drug costs, Sachs said.

The safe harbor for chronic care has been championed by the Smarter Health Care Coalition, a partnership linking industry heavyweights including America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), the insurers’ lobbying group; the U.S. Chamber of Commerce; Novo Nordisk; and Pfizer.

The safe harbor will make high-deductible health plans more attractive to employers, according to Tracy Watts, a senior partner at benefits firm Mercer, which could prompt insurers to supply them. “Such a change would go a long way toward encouraging more employers to offer [high-deductible] plans and would boost enrollment,” Watts wrote in a blog post.

The White House has not issued an official executive order on drug prices yet. The draft order, first obtained by The New York Times, has been overshadowed by the political drama over the health bill on the Hill.

Major trade groups have largely avoided shedding political capital on the congressional health care fight — among the most conspicuously absent: PhRMA, the Biotechnology Innovation Organization and the Association for Accessible Medicines, the generic-medicines lobby.

Pharmaceutical companies would see a $2.7 billion annual tax break, but that money would be eclipsed by losses in revenue from Medicaid and Medicare, as well as the drop in demand for health care from the millions of newly uninsured, Moody’s concluded in March.

PhRMA won’t yet say whether it supports the chronic-care safe harbor. “We can’t speak to what the administration will do on this issue and don’t think it would be appropriate to speculate,” said Holly Campbell, deputy vice president of public affairs at PhRMA.

Nursing Homes Move Into The Insurance Business

KFF Health News, July 13, 2017

The plans are recent additions to the Medicare Advantage market. “There’s a conflict there,” says a senior attorney with the Center for Medicare Advocacy.

This article first appeared July 13, 2017 on Kaiser Health News.

By Jordan Rau

Around the country, a handful of nursing home companies have begun selling their own private Medicare insurance policies, pledging close coordination and promising to give clinicians more authority to decide what treatments they will cover for each patient.

These plans are recent additions to the Medicare Advantage market, where private plans have become an increasingly popular alternative to traditional fee-for-service coverage. Unlike other plans, these policies offered by long-term care companies often place a nurse in the skilled nursing facility or retirement village, where they can talk directly to staff and assess patients’ conditions. Some provide primary care doctors and nurses to residents in the homes or in affiliated assisted living facilities or retirement villages with the aim of staving off hospitalizations.

“The traditional model is making decisions based on paper, and in our model, these decisions are being made by clinicians who are really talking to the staff and seeing the patient,” said Angie Tolbert, a vice president of quality at PruittHealth, which began offering its plan to residents in 10 of its nursing homes in Georgia last year. “It’s a big shift in mindset.”

Not everyone finds such plans superior. Some patients who are in disputes with the insurers have faulted the nursing home staff — who work for the same company — for not helping challenge decisions about coverage. They complain that the company holds an unfair advantage over Medicare beneficiaries.

“There’s a conflict there,” said Toby Edelman, a senior attorney with the Center for Medicare Advocacy.

In an Erickson Living retirement village in Silver Spring, Md., Faith Daiak signed up for an Erickson Advantage plan sold by a nurse whose office was in the main village building, according to her son, J.J. Daiak. After a bout with the flu last February weakened her enough to need a 10-day hospitalization, she was sent to her village’s skilled nursing facility. There, the insurer repeatedly tried to cut short her stay.

Erickson Advantage first said it would stop paying for Daiak, 88, because she wasn’t getting healthier in the nursing facility. Her son appealed by pointing out that Medicare explicitly said as part of the 2014 settlement of a class-action lawsuit that patients do not have to be improving to qualify for skilled nursing care.

Daiak’s appeal was denied, but the issue was sidelined in March when her rapid weight loss in the nursing home sent her back to the hospital, he said.

After Daiak returned to the nursing home with a feeding tube in her stomach, the insurer again tried to curtail her time there, saying she did not need that level of care. The family successfully appealed that decision after noting that Medicare’s manual said feeding-tube maintenance required the skilled care of a nursing facility.

In April, Erickson Advantage again said it would not continue paying for Daiak’s stay. It reversed that decision after Kaiser Health News asked the company about the case, J.J. Daiak said. He said the plan did not explain its turnaround.

Dolphine Williams (left) and Rita Coopersmith visit Faith Daiak in the Riderwood-ArborRidge Skilled Nursing Facility in Silver Spring, Md., on May 12, 2017. (Courtesy of the Daiak family)

While this Medicare Advantage plan touts its “team that knows you personally and wants to help,” J.J. Daiak said he found the registered nurse at Erickson’s Silver Spring community not helpful. “All I see is her trying to get Erickson out of having to pay for the nursing home,” he said. He subsequently switched his mother to traditional Medicare coverage with a supplemental Medigap policy, which she had until this year.

Erickson Living, the parent company of the nursing home and insurer, declined to discuss individual cases but noted that Medicare has given its insurance plans the best quality rating of five stars. In a written statement, the company said that “medical service determinations for Erickson Advantage members are based on reviews by licensed clinical staff and clinical guideline criteria. Our primary focus is always on ensuring that the healthcare being provided for our residents matches a patient’s needs and established clinical treatment protocols.”

Edelman said the dispute was particularly troubling because Erickson’s retirement villages are marketed on the promise that the company will care for seniors in all stages of aging. “They don’t tell you what they won’t pay for,” she said.

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There are nearly 18 million enrollees in the overall Medicare Advantage market. Medicare pays private insurers a set amount to care for each beneficiary. In theory, this payment method gives the insurers motivation to keep patients from needing costly medical services such as hospitalizations.

A subset of Medicare Advantage plans are designed exclusively for people who either require or are expected to require at least 90 days of skilled services from nursing homes, assisted living facilities or other long-term care institutions. UnitedHealthcare directly offers three-quarters of these plans with about 40,000 enrollees, far more than those offered by nursing home companies. Matthew Burns, a UnitedHealth spokesman, said the majority of the company’s plans are rated four stars or better on Medicare’s five-star quality scale.

“Our plans offer members quality and peace of mind — and they are considered above average to excellent by CMS quality and performance standards,” he said in a statement.

United also underwrites Erickson’s policies, which have around 200 enrollees, and were the first Advantage plans offered by a long-term care operator. Under the arrangement, Erickson Advantage decides when a nursing home stay is covered.

Nick Williams, PruittHealth’s care integration officer, said its Medicare insurance plan has resulted in 30 percent fewer hospitalizations among residents since it began last year. The company intends to expand the insurance coverage to residents at 42 of its other nursing homes in Georgia. Other nursing home chains are experimenting with this model in Missouri, South Carolina, Virginia and elsewhere.

Anne Tumlinson, a Washington health care industry consultant who specializes in long-term care, said that when a nursing home’s company is on the hook for the cost of hospitalizations of their patients, it is more likely to make efforts to prevent them.

“It gets them out of hospitalizing people at the drop of the hat,” she said. “If you live in a nursing home or are living in assisted living and they have one of these plans going, they’re going to be investing heavily in 24/7 access to primary care.”

She said big insurers have so many different types of enrollees that they are less focused on the particular needs of nursing home patients. “They’re too big, they’re bureaucratic, and they are insurers, not providers,” she said.

The Costs Patients Face

In Hingham, Mass., Suzanne Carmick has been frustrated with the Erickson plan’s unwillingness to pay for most of her mother’s prolonged stay. Last October, 98-year-old Lorraine Carmick went into Erickson’s nursing home after a hospitalization. Eleven days later, Erickson Advantage notified Suzanne Carmick it would stop paying for the facility because it said her mother was strong enough to move with the help of a rolling walker. Under Medicare’s rules, nursing home stays are not covered if a patient does not need daily physical therapy. Erickson said two or three days was sufficient for Carmick.

Suzanne Carmick appealed the decision, saying Erickson exaggerated her mother’s recovery, noting that she had dementia, an infection and was wearing two stiff leg braces. She said getting therapy five days a week provided in the nursing home would help her mother recover faster.

“She still cannot stand up or sit down or go anywhere … without an aide helping her by pulling her up or setting her in a chair,” Carmick wrote. “She is improving but is now supposed to stop or decrease PT [physical therapy], and she must start paying out-of-pocket?”

After a week’s extension, the nursing home began billing her mother at its daily rate of $463, which rose to $483 this year as Lorraine Carmick remained in the nursing home. A Medicare appeals judge subsequently ruled Erickson’s action was justified, based on the testimony from the nursing home staff — all Erickson employees. If the insurer had covered a maximum stay, Carmick would have avoided more than $30,000 in bills she now owes. Suzanne Carmick said her mother has been on a wait list for six months for a bed on a less expensive floor in the nursing facility.

“It is a closed system where the skilled nursing facility, physicians and Medicare Advantage plan are all one and the same,” she said. “The Erickson Advantage plan is turning out to be quite a disadvantage at this point.”

KHN’s coverage related to aging & improving care of older adults is supported by The John A. Hartford Foundation. Coverage of aging and long-term care issues is supported by The SCAN Foundation.

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